A Midsummer's Sin(21)
“Good God.” She had borne such abuse. And now Thomas had treated her roughly, demandingly, like men treated a whore. He began to feel ill. “Rose…”
He didn’t know what to say.
She stared back at him so placidly, so peacefully. “I was never actually forced, not tied to the bed and physically made to submit. I didn’t have the choice to say no to whatever they wanted because, had they complained to Mr Boger, he would have thrown me and my mother to the streets. However, they were all gentlemen.”
“You were forced to this?” All his muscles were tightening and energy surged in his blood. He fisted his hands. “How could those gentlemen not know? Did they abuse you?”
She shrugged. “With some of them it was terrible. They were old, ugly, poorly washed, heavy handed. But some were not so bad. One or two were handsome and kind. However, there was always a sense that I must do these things and so it was impossible to truly enjoy them or be at ease.”
Anger boiled over within him. “Oh, come now, don’t lie to me. They were not always all of them kind.”
A shadow crossed her face. “No, that’s true, they weren’t.”
“And this Mr Boger, he used force to coerce you? At times?”
She looked down and nodded slowly.
His heart contracted. “Didn’t that make you hate men and their demands?”
“It made me hate Mr Boger for putting me in that position. But he’s not all men.” She glanced up and her brown eyes shone with such a purity of spirit, such an open willingness to face life, he didn’t know what to say.
Pain for her suffering knifed through him. Hatred burned his guts.
He closed his eyes and balled his fists tighter. Boger deserved to die.
Thomas would write to Harvard College and tell them he would be delayed in accepting his teaching job. He’d go to England, seek Boger and kill him.
She paled and her dark eyes grew large. “Don’t look at me like that…please!”
Her words did not register. He only heard her anguish.
It was too much.
He couldn’t keep looking at her. Anger pounded through him. Anger like he’d only known once before. It energised him to the point of being unable to think. He jerked to his feet. He needed to move his body. To clear his head.
He needed to make plans. To think things through.
Watching Thomas stride to the door and leave the house, Rosalind’s throat constricted and began to burn. She placed her hand to her collarbone, as if she could force the welling emotion down. She’d known the telling might repulse him. But she’d had to tell him. She’d gambled and lost for he was repulsed. She’d seen the horrible look on his face, the disgust he couldn’t hide.
It was like dying. Truly it was. For she loved him and nothing would ever be the same in her life after he was gone. All her dreams of being a helpmate, a wife, were gone now. There would never be another man for her.
But what now, then?
She had no idea. Well, she’d always survived. She’d survive even this. Perhaps she would return to the theatre life, go to Paris or Italy. But she loathed the very idea.
The clopping thud of approaching horse’s hooves on the road sent her running to the window. The man was riding like a fury. But she recognised the tall, wiry man and the black gelding.
Jacob, a fellow bondslave of Goody Wilson.
A curl of dread wound around the pit of her stomach. She hurried outside and met him halfway as he rushed up the walk.
His face looked grave. Like death. “Jacob!”
“It’s Hannah. She’s taken ill.”
* * * *
Thomas sat in the kitchen, head in his hands. Exhausted. Reverend Shepard and his eldest daughter were with Hannah. Thomas had to believe the man’s previous medical training would make a difference. He and Rosalind had just barely kept ahead of Hannah’s illness.
Rosalind had given so much of herself so freely to his child. She had shrunk from the more gruelling aspects of the illness. She’d been so gentle, so kind, caressing the hair from Hannah’s forehead and singing softly to soothe her fretting.
He shouldn’t compare.
He couldn’t help but compare.
Patience had never been easy with illness. She had let the maid nurse their children through sickness while she’d read aloud from the Bible and prayed. He had thought nothing of it. With a houseful of servants, his mother had been much like that.
In his overtired mind, the memory of the full horror and pain of the night his infant son had died on the Abigail hit him full force.
He had touched Patience’s shoulders. She had slumped down and evaded his touch. She had looked up at him, her grey eyes strangely calm. She had clutched her open Bible, her lips had been moving.